Reuters
U.S. planes pounded targets outside Afghanistan's capital Kabul once again early on Tuesday after Washington launched its heaviest daylight strikes so far to root out Osama bin Laden and punish his Taliban protectors. As a low-flying Air Force Special Forces AC-130 gunship concentrated its fire on targets in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar on Monday, the Taliban's civil war foes said they were closing in on the key northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif.
CNN quoted witnesses in Kandahar as reporting unusual air activity overnight. There was no independent confirmation of the report.
Two warplanes screamed over Kabul around 3 a.m. on Tuesday, dropping at least three bombs on targets just outside the city in the first attack since late Monday evening.
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10/16/2001 ||
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The Independent By Patrick Cockburn
The military forces of Afghanistan's opposition Northern Alliance have advanced close to the key strategic city of Mazar-i-Sharif. An offensive led by General Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek warlord who once ruled the city, had pushed back the Taliban to within four miles of Mazar-i-Sharif. General Dostum is attacking from the south. He is reported to be close to the airport though this is already out of commission because America has control of the air. It is impossible to verify the Northern Alliance claims since General Dostum is operating from an isolated mountain bastion to the south of Mazar-i-Sharif accessible only by helicopter. The Taliban in northern Afghanistan are largely cut off from the areas of their main support south of the Hindu Kush
mountains, with only one road, in poor condition, open to their
forces.
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10/16/2001 ||
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New Republic: Idiocy Watch: George Monbiot, The Guardian, October 16
"There are plenty of reasons to be sceptical. The magical appearance of the terrorists' luggage, passports, and flight manual looks rather too good to be true.... Even the anthrax scare looks suspiciously convenient. Just as the hawks in Washington were losing the public argument about extending the war to other countries, journalists start receiving envelopes full of bacteria, which might as well have been labelled `a gift from Iraq.' This could indeed be the work of terrorists, who may have their own reasons for widening the conflict, but there are plenty of other ruthless operators who would benefit from a shift in public opinion."
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10/16/2001 ||
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JIM RITTER AND FRAN SPIELMAN Chicago Sun-Times
A terrified Northwest Side resident called 911 over the weekend to report a suspicious substance on the street. A hazardous materials unit rushed to the scene to investigate. The scary goo turned out to be guacamole. "That's an example of the extremes people are going to," said Fire Department spokeswoman Molly Sullivan. "A few months ago, people would have walked right past it."
With the nation in the grips of anthrax hysteria, hazmat teams are rushing from scene to scene to investigate sightings of talcum powder, Tide, foot powder, sand, confetti and other harmless substances. Chicago's 911 center received about 16 anthrax calls over the weekend, "and the calls have really taken off today," said center spokesman Larry Langford.
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10/16/2001 ||
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By Patrick Bishop in Quetta news.telegraph.uk
The preacher ranted, the crowd waved bin Laden placards and chanted, "Death to America". But when the rally was over the 4,000 or so advocates of jihad who had gathered in the dust of the Quetta cricket ground to protest at American actions in Afghanistan meekly trooped off home to tea. It was the same story all over the country. A national day of strikes and protests called by Pakistan's main religious parties to coincide with the visit of Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, fizzled out in half-hearted observance and poor attendances.
For the moment, at least, it seems that the government of General Pervaiz Musharraf has ridden out the squalls of Islamic anger generated by the war and is firmly in control of the country's security. In Islamabad many shops and some schools closed and there were several arrests. There was a flurry of stone-throwing in Hyderabad. In Jacobabad, where a man was shot dead on Sunday in protests against America being allowed to use the local air base for search and rescue missions, police arrested scores of Taliban supporters to prevent a repetition. It was all very much less than the Islamic parties had been hoping for. The Islamists have not even managed to galvanise all their core supporters. Religious parties have never managed to win more than five per cent in any election in Pakistan.
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10/16/2001 ||
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Matthew Engel The Guardian
Relations between the US and two of its core allies in the war against terrorism, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, approached crisis point yesterday after the Saudi interior minister, Prince Naif, attacked the assault on Afghanistan while Pakistan pressed Washington to ensure that its bombing campaign would be short-lived. In the latest and most public of a series of disagreements that have evidently taken the US by surprise in the five weeks since the September 11 attacks, Prince Naif told the official Saudi Press Agency that the kingdom wanted the US to flush out the terrorists without bombing. "This is killing innocent people. The situation does not please us at all."
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10/16/2001 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
